The District of Columbia’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District (BID --- a 43-block neighborhood that stretches from the White House to Dupont Circle.) has just announced it is open for and ready to receive entries to the city’s Annual Golden Haiku Literary Competition. It’s the 6th year for this event and it’s incredibly popular. Last year there were more than 1,600 original entries from 45 countries, 34 states and the District of Columbia itself.

Of course, we think the best way to learn about White House history is to take a Pickle Pea Walk. In Washington, DC. But, we do realize there are other, very delightful ways to get a look-see into life and work at the White House. And in our research for the walks, we have discovered some very good reads that help with this endeavor and are also great fun. Here are a few of these.

Kings and queens, chiefs, premiers, presidents and all manner of heads of state have exchanged gifts almost as long as there has been a civilized world. Gifts have been a symbol of respect between people of different cultures, a symbol of peaceful coexistence and international cooperation, even friendship.

But when our country was a young democracy, our leaders felt that accepting gifts from foreign countries was way too dangerous.

We see images of Washington, DC as it looks today on a regular basis --- the Capitol building, the White House, the National Mall, maybe the monuments and memorials. But what did it look like when it was the nation’s new Capital City? Do you have any idea? Can you picture it in your head?

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He was born Oct. 27, 1858, and died nearly 100 years ago on Jan. 6, 1919.

As a birthday present to Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 (and father of our beloved Quentin), the Library of Congress has now digitized their extensive collection of his papers and made them available to the public on-line.

Walk guests on The White House as a Home Walk, led by our dear Quentin Roosevelt, frequently ask him what church his father, the president, and the family attended while living in Washington, DC. With the help of our dear friend Toby Selda, educator and author at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, New York, we have some information about this.

On July 14, 1918, a little over a year after the United States entered World War I, Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt’s 6 children, was shot down and killed by a German Fokker plane over the Aisne River in France. His plane fell behind enemy lines, near the village of Chamery. He was a pilot and flight commander with the 95th “Kicking Mule” Aero Squadron in the United States Air Service.

This would be the wedding of Luci Baines Johnson, younger daughter of President Lyndon Baines Johnson and First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson to Patrick John Nugent, August 6, 1966 at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.